Suzanne Foster discovers the body of a Bolivian scientist in the parking garage next to the Medical School at UCLA. The police treat the killing as just another drug deal gone bad. P.I. Roger Bowman, Suzanne, and his team investigate the murder, which seems to be linked to a small biotechnology company and a new anti-cancer drug they are developing. The reader is off on a whirlwind tour of Los Angeles and Westwood in search of clues. The clues are all there: Can you figure out whodunit before Roger does? This fast-paced short story features characters from the author's popular South American mystery novel series working on a murder case at home in Los Angeles.

Book
creation ratings:

Overall
total -- 30 out of a possible 30

--
Story & characters -- 10

--
Cover & title -- 10

--
Editing & formatting -- 10

*
based on a 1-10 scale with: 1-4, poor; 5-7, good; 8-10, very good.*

My
5 point review:

-1- I am a
lover of mysteries and this really nailed it.

-2- Gives a
aura of the old fashioned mysteries of the earlier days of Tommy and Tuppence
of the Agatha Christie book
eras.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

About the book:
Another adventure and life lesson from Jt Sather, author of How To Survive When the Bottom Drops Out, who encountered drug dealers, thieves and Las Vegas PD while in pursuit of his stolen video camera and committing what some might call felony kidnapping.

My 5 point review:
-1- Fairly interesting story, but not nearly as good as his previous effort. The writing was also not nearly up to the level of his first book. It’s very half-assedly brutal, mostly realistic, but didn’t hold my interest very well. For some reason, most of the first chapter is repeated at the end of the book. Perhaps for some grasp at a dramatic hook? I don’t know … it just seemed weird and out of place in this kind of story. The story is not high art, it’s not bizarro, it’s just there.

-2- As with Sather’s previous book, the believability factor is there, but you never quite know if this was something that did happen. I tend to think it probably was, what with the somewhat trite way the entire story was resolved. It’s not a really satisfying ending for the characters or the reader, as you sort of go “gee, why did they bother?”

-3- A third of the book is either a convoluted “about the author” diatribe or samples from his previous book. I understand that the author is probably using this as a promotional loss leader, but I absolutely hate book excerpts being used to pad out a page count. It cheats the reader as a buyer.

-4- Basic formatting issues abound, especially between sections of the book, where the text goes through at least three different sizes without the reader changing anything. The chapter headings and titles are improperly indented. The table of contents does not delineate the story proper from the samples, going from “Chapter Nine” to “Chapter 1”.

-5-Basic misspellings are quite annoying. Corpus Christy? Dilema? How do you get those wrong? Especially with a word processor.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

About the book:
Celeste had been dreaming of Bryn since she was eight: the flash of light across the sky, Bryn running, the explosion that nothing human should have survived, and then Bryn climbing out of the smoking crater and looking right at her. He was beautiful: six feet tall with muscles like coiled steel and dark blue eyes. His hair was black and his body was chiseled out of marble, like a Greek God.

For years she had thought he was nothing but a dream. But slowly the dream changed, and it seemed that he was trying to reach her. His arm stretched out as if to touch her.

And then she saw him, burning under the light of dawn. His skin was flame as their eyes met. Celeste’s heart sped up and she gasped. Bryn had found her. (from Amazon)

The band
knows him as their tight-lipped lead singer Jim, but Jacob Bar Azazel is
Satan's only son, a man with thousands of years of history and a heavy burden
of cursed love. Now against all the odds and despite facing terrifying foes,
the ragged rock and roll band have made it to Hell in time for the opening of
the Liminal Year. Can they get through the hordes of Hell to the Council
Chamber? Can they keep it together long enough to get what they came for? And
what exactly does Jim have up his sleeve?

The Good
Son is the sixth installment of Rock Band Fights Evil, a pulp fiction
serial.

Book
creation ratings:

Overall
total -- 30 out of a possible 30

-- Story
& characters -- 10

-- Cover
& title -- 10

-- Editing
& formatting -- 10

* based on
a 1-10 scale with: 1-4, poor; 5-7, good;
8-10, very good

The Review

-- 1 -- Fast
Paced, Action Packed.

-- 2 -- Flashbacks
done well.

-- 3 -- Interesting
twists on what Hell is and isn't
like.

-- 4 -- Lots
of Cliff hangers.

-- 5 -- Son
of the Devil, need I say more?

Reader
Recommendations

Genre -- Pulp
Fiction.

Age
recommendations -- 17+

Sex
content rating -- No Sex. Someone's Father is be-headed in the name of
Love.